The 58th Venice Biennale is going to confront fake news when it debuts in 2019, but its title sounds like old news. In a statement to the press, curator Ralph Rugoff explains that “At a moment when the digital dissemination of fake news and ‘alternative facts’ is corroding political discourse and the trust on which it depends, it is worth pausing whenever possible to reassess our terms of reference.”

This vaguely foreboding title actually comes from a speech given in the late 1930s by Austen Chamberlain, a member of British Parliament, in which he cited what had wrongly been understood as an ancient Chinese curse. Naturally, there is no curse. This supposed “translation” is ersatz, a phony rhetorical device meant to convey Western cynicism through a counterfeit Confucian motto.

Rugoff knows his title is fake, but he defends the choice precisely as a symbol of fake news: a catchphrase that’s defied its false provenance to become a legitimate nugget of political wisdom deployed by politicians around the world, from Hillary Clinton to Robert F. Kennedy. (So maybe it is a curse … )

But surely, using clichés makes the politician no wiser and the phrase no more profound than any other knock-off. Given the hefty explanation behind the title, “May You Live in Interesting Times” sounds like the art world — at its worst — trying to do the most with the least. Can you believe?

“May You Live in Interesting Times” is a sophomoric example of the art world’s failure to grasp the real impact of the post-truth era. It sounds like a toast rich people give over champagne as others suffer from the political consequences that money avoids. And the reality is that something like the Venice Biennale, sequestered on its little floating duchy, will again fail to meet its own expectations of political consciousness.